Help With Possession Based 4-3-3 (4-1-2-2-1)

[smgers]

Okay so for this years FM I thought I would break away from my normal procedure of downloading a popular tactic and would try to create my own. I'm not hoping for a world dominating tactic but one that would bring me relative success based upon the club/level that I'm playing at.

As with every FM I am starting my main career game with the team I support which is Rangers. For the first time in a number of years we are being treated to entertaining, attacking football at Ibrox with a young squad which is why I've decided to try and create my own tactic and try to emulate the way we are currently playing in real life.

I have decided upon the following shape/roles as my initial tactic: http://imgur.com/sPVZpxP

And also the following team instructions: http://imgur.com/pd8EFUw

My overall aim of the tactic is to play entertaining, possession based football where the majority of goals are scored through patient, build up play with working the ball into the box rather than playing high balls. I know this won't be possible in every game but, certainly, for the majority where we are considered heavy favourites then this will be the case.

What I would like is peoples input into where they may feel that the tactic may be 'inbalanced' and to where they feel I may have overlooked certain roles/instructions with the tactic. As this is the first time that I have tried to create my own tactic from scratch I feel there's an overwhelming selection of options/roles to select for each position. I ave read some of the threads in here in order to get help with the initial base of the tactic.

During pre season I was getting over 60% possession and a high number of chances created - this was against weaker opposition though.

My previous two games have been against Elgin City away in the cup - won 2-1 thanks to a late goal, had a large number of chances (into the 20's), possession was 51% in their favour.

Then St Mirren at home in the league where I twice had to come from behind to secure a 2-2 draw - again I had a large number of chances but possession was only 52% in my favour.

Overall I feel that the tactic does play some great football at times displaying the way that I would like the team to play. It's at this point though that I need some advice on how to take the tactic forward in terms of possession, chance conversion rate and any defensive stability improvements.

Any help/input appreciated.

[RTHerringbone]

In my opinion, there is a disconnect between the vision and your approach in terms of Mentality and Duties. You say you want a patient, possession game, but you are using an aggressive Mentality with a high tempo. In general terms, the lower the tempo the greater the possession. Next, you have a lot of Attack Duty players. Coupled with the Mentality you should just need to watch a few minutes of a match on Full Highlights to see what the impact of this is: everyone is running away from the ball and trying to get forward as fast as they can.

[smgers]

In my opinion, there is a disconnect between the vision and your approach in terms of Mentality and Duties. You say you want a patient, possession game, but you are using an aggressive Mentality with a high tempo. In general terms, the lower the tempo the greater the possession. Next, you have a lot of Attack Duty players. Coupled with the Mentality you should just need to watch a few minutes of a match on Full Highlights to see what the impact of this is: everyone is running away from the ball and trying to get forward as fast as they can.

Thanks for the advice - have went back to the drawing board and, whilst keeping the same shape, have changed a number of instructions and roles.

I think initially I was picking instructions/roles/duties all to do with attack without actually thinking of the shape of my team and the impact they would have in certain instances. Still testing my new one but I am already seeing a lot more possession and, whilst, my overall number of chances has decreased slightly my on target ratio and ccc have both increased.

[W I L M]

I second what Herringbone has said lower the tempo and mentality and you should find that you'll keep the ball more. Possibly lower the passing directness from Mixed to Short. The only thing you want to avoid is being too patient, not being able to break through and drawing 0-0.

[arthurskoorb]

I have started a thread called sterile domination using a 4-3-3 an a 4-2-3-1.

Its taken a while to tweak but I am currently on a 15 game win streak, i went 14 games without conceding a goal and average about 60% posession per game.

[kingjericho]

For a possession based 4-3-3 I can't see a better place to start than this thread. I based my FM15 tactic on this and went to win multiple CL with Dulwich Hamlet.

What I most learned from this, is that if you want to play a patient game, use cautious mentalities and not too many attacking duties. In the end, is what makes sense that works best.